2006-12-15 12:17:00 PST MARTINEZ -- An Indiana drifter defiantly proclaimed his innocence before being sentenced to death today for brutally raping, sodomizing and killing an Antioch mother of three who had been enjoying her daily walk on a popular Concord trail when she was attacked.

But moments earlier, Frazier blasted prosecutor John Cope for having presented to jurors nothing that "reflected the truth whatsoever" and complained of biased stories about him in the media.

"Now I'm expected to show remorse for crimes that I didn't commit," he said, warning the judge not to send an "innocent man to Death Row."

But the victim's brother, William St. John, 56, said outside court that justice had been served. "Oh you bet," St. John said, adding, however, "Not until he's dead."

Addressing the court, St. John struggled to control his emotions while describing how his father, Paul Aiello, who had attended the trial, died "of a broken heart" at the age of 84 before Frazier was sentenced today.

St. John thanked the prosecutor, the judge and the jury, saying, "You don't know what you did for my family."

In June, an eight-woman, four-man jury convicted Frazier of first-degree murder, rape and sodomy for killing Aiello-Loreck on May 13, 2003, by dragging her into vegetation off a trail and bashing her head at least 10 times with a metal bar. In August, the same jury decided that Frazier should die for the crimes.

Authorities linked Frazier to the slaying after tests matched DNA from cigarette butts at the scene and the metal bar to semen recovered from the victim's body.

Aiello-Loreck was on her daily lunchtime walk and speaking to her husband on her cell phone when she was attacked in what Minney said was a murder that was "cruel, painful and prolonged by sexual activity."

During today's hearing, Cope said the case was about the choices Frazier made to "snuff out a beautiful woman's life in a brutal way when he raped and sodomized her." The prosecutor urged the judge to uphold the jury's verdict of death for Frazier because "frankly, he earned it."

But defense attorneys Wendy Downing and Eric Quandt said their client wasn't "the worst of the worst." They said Frazier was mentally ill, had been emotionally abused during his childhood, had sniffed gasoline and abused alcohol and suffered organic brain dysfunction.

Only recently have high courts ruled that teenagers and the mentally retarded shouldn't be executed, and perhaps in the future the same will apply to the mentally ill, Quandt told the judge, adding, "You and only you must decide whether to kill Bob. If you choose to kill Bob, you will look back at this time as a barbaric time."

Quandt cited comments made by the prosecutor during the trial in which Cope said the slaying had "ripped a hole in the fabric of society." Executing Frazier would "rip another hole in the fabric of society. It will not fix the hole that he created. Killing Bob will just create another hole."

Quandt urged Minney to be the "champion of the evolving standards of decency, not an impediment."

Downing agreed, asking why her client should face the same fate as Saddam Hussein and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. She called Frazier a kind, genuine and decent human being who shouldn't be judged by a "minute fraction of his life."

"Please don't close the door on the opportunity of redemption," Downing implored.

But Minney ultimately sided with the prosecutor and rejected Frazier's motion for a new trial.